New Delhi:
In an attempt to dismantle the confrontation between seven chief ministers and the Centre, the Prime Minister has sent letters today assuring state governments that their concerns about the new anti-terror agency are being addressed. Every non-Congress government and Mamata Banerjee had complained that the National Counter Terrorism Centre or NCTC has been granted powers that encroach upon strictly state turf.
Dr Manmohan Singh says he has instructed the Home Ministry to address the questions raised by the Group of 7, a hefty conglomerate that includes Ms Banerjee, Naveen Patnaik of Odisha, Jayalalithaa of Tamil Nadu, Nitish Kumar of Bihar, and Narendra Modi of Gujarat. They have all agreed that the Centre should have consulted state governments before issuing an executive order that sanctions the NCTC; they also believe that in its current form, the "draconian" order violates the principles of federalism.
Dr Singh wrote today, "In forming the NCTC, it is not the Government's intent in any way to affect the basic features of the Constitutional provisions and allocation of powers between the States and the Union."
(Full text of PM's letter)Because law and order is a state issue, the Chief Ministers have objected to the NCTC's powers to swoop into any state, arrest suspects and fly them out. The anti-terror body is not obliged to consult the local government. Mr Kumar had said that the NCTC has wrongly been placed within the Intelligence Bureau, which he described as "a secret intelligence organisation without any accountability to parliament." The chief minister had asked, "Is it not an established principle that secret intelligence is never given the powers of arrest?"
The Prime Minister responded today, "The primary purpose of the NCTC is to coordinate counter-terrorism efforts throughout the country, as the Intelligence Bureau has been doing so far. It is for this reason that the NCTC has been located within the IB and not as a separate organization."